This invention relates generally to dispensers for dispensing material. More particularly, this invention relates to a hands-free or contactless roll dispenser for dispensing paper towels.
Dispensers for rolls of flexible sheet material, such as paper toweling, have been employed for many years. Such dispensers are widely used in public lavatories to dispense paper toweling for users to dry their hands. Typically, a roll of sheet material is rotatably supported inside a dispenser cabinet. In manually operated devices, a user manually actuates a lever that drives a feed mechanism configured to dispense the sheet material beyond the confines of the cabinet. The feed mechanism typically includes a drive roller and an idle roller. The lever interacts with the drive roller so that actuation of the lever rotates the drive roller. Rotation of the drive roller acts to unwind material from the material roll. One such dispenser is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,168,653, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,168,653 describes a web material dispenser having a front-mounted hand crank or handle that, when pushed/pulled downward, causes sheet material to be advanced from the roll and thereby dispensed from the dispenser. U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0181371, the disclosure of which is also incorporated herein, describes another roll dispenser having a hand crank or handle that is side-mounted relative to the dispenser but, when pushed/pulled downward, also causes sheet material to be advanced from the roll. Such dispensers require direct interaction with the hand of the user or those nearby, such as a parent, to effectuate operation of the advancement and feed mechanisms associated with dispensing the sheet material from the dispenser.
The dispensers described in the above-referenced patent documents, as well as other manually activated dispensers, have a lever mounted to or extending from areas proximate the front of the respective dispenser. The lever interfaces with a feed mechanism such as a drive roller such that, operation of the lever—whether being pushed or pulled in an upward, downward, or forward direction, actuates the drive roller which in turn advances the roll of sheet material. Dispensers of this nature are generally referred to as manual dispensers and require a user to place a hand (or portion thereof) on the lever to advance sheet material from the roll.
Increasingly, users are reluctant to have their hands contact such dispensers in an effort avoid contact with possible contagions associated with prior users of the respective dispensers. As a result, many users find such hand lever operated towel dispensers unacceptable and frustratingly such that some intended users have a tendency to exit lavatories without drying their hands. Other users, still attempting to avoid any possible contagions but unwilling to leave the lavatory with wet hands, attempt to engage the lever of the dispenser with portions of the body other than the palm and fingers of a hand, such as their arm, elbow, or the dorsal side of their hand. While some users have been able to effectuate operation of the dispenser with such strained effort, for many users and dispensers it is difficult, if not impossible, to effectuate operation of the manual advancement mechanism with anything other than the palm and fingers of a hand of a user.
One solution to overcome the undesired contact with such manually operated roll material dispensing systems has been the implementation of so-called “contactless” dispensers. Such dispensers commonly use one or more proximity sensors that detect the presence of a hand of a user relative to the dispenser and include a motorized feed assembly that advances or dispenses the sheet material. Contactless dispensers are not without their respective drawbacks. The electronic detection and motorized feed mechanisms can be expensive to acquire and implement and can include sensitive sensors intended to prevent unintended activation and/or operation of the dispensing system. As such, currently available electronic contactless or “hands-free” dispensers may not provide the desired operability and/or be an economically viable solution in some situations and/or desired implementations of such devices.
Accordingly, there is a need for a lower cost dispenser that allows the user to dispense the material from the dispenser in a manner that requires no direct physical interaction between the user and any portion of the dispensing system.